Crowdfunding pioneers Indiegogo and Kickstarter opened up their fundraising platforms in 2008 and 2009 respectively, but 2012 may be the first year that tech investors and entrepreneurs took crowdfunding very seriously.

Some hardware entrepreneurs raised huge amounts via crowdfunding this year, notably Pebble Technology which raised $10.27 million in July on Kickstarter. The company is still developing and manufacturing its signature “smartwatch,” a time piece that also alerts its wearer with vibrations when a call, email or message comes through their smartphone.

Before crowdfunding, consumer electronics companies had to be more mature to attract investors. One example: Skullcandy raised $2 million in 2007, in a Series B funding round to make more of its signature products, like headphones and earbuds for snowboarders. By the time the company raised that money, Skullcandy already sold 35 different products.

Lora Kolodny/VentureWire

The co-founders of Lemnos Labs, Helen Zelman and Jeremy Conrad.

A San Francisco-based incubator for early-stage hardware startups, Lemnos Labs, reports that today a majority of its portfolio companies use crowdfunding to make money. More importantly, they use crowdfunding to see if there’s real demand for the products they’ve imagined and prototyped, says Lemnos founding partner Jeremy Conrad.

On Thursday, in lieu of a traditional holiday party, Lemnos is hosting executives and investors to discuss the future of hardware, including in light of crowdfunding trends.

Bia Sport, a Lemnos company, raised over $400,000 on Kickstarter this year to make “sport watches for women” that use GPS technology to track a wearer’s activity levels.

In 2013, Conrad expects a new wave of sites and services to crop up to help “makers” navigate their way through from crowdfunding pitch to prototype and production.

“Vetting projects will become important in 2013 for crowdfunding communities,” he says. “Nobody wants to see people pitch bum projects, then fail to deliver, or possibly worse, deliver bad technology to their backers. That could cause consumer fatigue and a backlash,” he explains.

Overall, though, the market for independently made hardware looks strong to Conrad. Projects that started on crowdfunding sites but grew up in 2012 support his view.

These were four of the most memorable:

Roominate Toy

Roominate Toy

The “Chateau de Roominate.”

Founded by graduate engineering students at Stanford University, Alice Brooks and Bettina Chen, Roominate Toy makes dollhouses with electrical components that safely can be assembled by kids. The “dollhouse kits” encourage girls, ages six to 10, to explore science, tech, engineering and math.

Roominate originally raised $86,000 via Kickstarter, but locked in outside angel funding in the early fall of 2012. (The founders are not talking about who backed them or how much they put in, but confirmed that 10 investors were involved in the deal.)

Roominate Toy plans to launch new product extensions in 2013 after shipping its first dollhouse building kits this winter holiday. They cost $59 for the Original Roominate to $225 for the four-room, Chateau De Roominate.

Windowfarms

Windowfarms (as we previously reported) makes vertical gardens for people who live in an urban environment without yards or arable land of their own. Their customers can cultivate vegetables, herbs or other plants in their homes, without a lot of mess and energy-efficiently. The company raised $155,000 in angel funding after initially stirring up $257,000 in supportive capital from Kickstarter. Windowfarms products are now sold online and in museum stores.

Romotive

Romotive

Romotive’s iPhone-based robot “Romo.”

The makers of an iPhone-driven, programmable robot, Romotive, turned a one-time Kickstarter project into a venture-backed business this year. The company drew a $5 million investment from Sequoia Capital, Crunchfund, SV Angel and individual investors Chris Dixon and Aydin Senkut. And (as we reported in October) their bot, the Romo, hit the pages of the Neiman Marcus holiday catalog. Has the company stopped crowdfunding? Nope. In November 2011 it raised $114, 796 for its brand new concept, and in November 2012, it raised $170,034 more–again on Kickstarter–to make a second-generation of Romo bots.

Edison Junior Design Laboratory

A new startup from serial tech entrepreneur Jamie Siminoff–his previous ventures included Unsubscribe (sold to TrustedID) and PhoneTag–Edison Junior raised $139,170 on Kickstarter in September to make a portable charger for multiple mobile devices.

Something like an octopus, the POP portable power system features retractable cords that connect it to iPads, iPhones, Android devices and more. (It can charge four mobile devices at once.) The company attained outside funding from angel Joanne Wilson and others.

Following his first crowdfunding experience, Siminoff observed:

“VCs have been looking for excuses to get out of investing in companies that they don’t believe in since the beginning of time. They say no to startups for a million reasons. When you raise a good amount of money and interest [through crowdfunding] you can show them, and yourself, immediate validation that you are doing the right thing.”

Comments (1 of 1)

Some Kickstarters find that they are using much of their time interacting with their "crowds" rather than building their projects. Marketing is either time consuming or expensive and as more projects vy for space, marketing will be an ever rising hurdle.

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